


the rarest thing in the world

by annelesbonny



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, soft epilogues and all that, spoiler alert: this is gross and nothing happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 15:13:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13661640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annelesbonny/pseuds/annelesbonny
Summary: “When did you know you loved me?”





	the rarest thing in the world

the rarest thing in the world

 

**Somewhere in Ferelden, after it all**

_“our bodies, possessed by light”_

 

The rising sun throws lazy rays of buttery light across their bed, and Fenris thinks, _I am content_. Warm and safe, buried beneath as many blankets that had been within reach after Fenris, sated and spent, collapsed across Hawke’s chest and a heavy arm, tight around his waist, held him there for the entirety of the night. Even after so many long years it is still a strange feeling to wake slowly, to feel sunlight press his eyelids and not have his body shift into immediate alertness, sword in hand and ready to run. Instead, he lets the morning wash over him, eyes closed, body languid and loose, and listens to the quiet beating of Hawke’s heart.

All is calm.

That is, until his pillow (his _husband_ ) lets out a loud, rumbling snore. Fenris’ eyes pop open, and then narrow as he squirms under Hawke’s arm until he can properly glare at the man who, head thrown back and drooling slightly, sleeps on undisturbed.

For now.

 His quiet morning thoroughly shattered, Fenris shifts his long hair behind one ear and turns his thoughts to revenge. Hawke still has him caught around the waist, aided by the fact that Fenris himself has no real desire to leave the warmth of their bed, but nonetheless, he has other weapons at his disposal.  

He places the first kiss at Hawke’s throat, where neck bends to meet collarbone and the skin is tight and sensitive. One to his sternum follows, and the short, bristled hair there makes Fenris’ lips tingle. He stops for a moment to savor, then continues his quest.   

The next kiss finds Hawke’s heart, and he resists the urge to flick his teeth gently over the nearest nipple. Despite his self-restraint, Hawke begins to stir, one of his snores breaking off into a sleepy groan.

Fenris hides his smile amid the forest of chest hair. He works his way down to Hawke’s navel with a trail of wet, open-mouthed kisses. Fenris shifts until he is knelt between Hawke’s legs, runs his hands up and down muscled thighs, taking his time to admire the ripple of skin and muscle and scars.

He looks up when he realizes the snoring has stopped. Hawke’s eyes are open, and very, very awake. His gaze devours Fenris, who shivers and flushes despite having done this, and many other delightful bedroom things, before and enjoying each one thoroughly. Still, his own pleasure and the freedom to feel it, embrace it, bestow it on another (one other, rather) manages to catch him off guard now and again.

“What are you doing?” Hawke asks in a low, raspy voice, rough from sleep or arousal or a combination of both, and Fenris smiles, lowering his head.

“Waking you up.”

Nothing resembling speech occurs for some time.

 

“Well, consider me thoroughly awakened,” Hawke says eventually, and drops an enthusiastic, messy kiss to Fenris’ hairline.

Fenris smiles against Hawke’s shoulder and revels in the feeling of big hands, coarse and calloused from years of wielding a mage’s staff, but still impossibly gentle as they stroke down his back, resting briefly on the curve of his backside before journeying back upwards, rhythmic and soothing like the lapping of waves on white sand shores.

When Hawke’s fingers tangle in his hair, he practically purrs, though he’ll deny such nonsense later with fervor. Nubbed fingernails massage his scalp for a moment before Hawke pulls his head back until Fenris meets his eyes, which are bright and unusually somber for a man coming down from a _spectacular_ (there are one or two things at which Fenris truly excels) orgasm.

“What is it?” Fenris murmurs, stroking Hawke’s chin, and tugs lightly at the short hairs in his beard.

“I was just thinking—”

Fenris is unable to help falling into familiar banter. “Oh well, thanks for the warning.”

“Shut up.”

Fenris bites his shoulder, and Hawke yelps.

“ _Ow_. Fenris, really? I’m trying to be serious, you know.”

“My apologies, Hawke.” A lighter bite this time, followed by a soothing swipe of tongue. “Do continue.”

Hawke stares up at the ceiling, his face softening in contemplation, his mouth moving slowly, jaw shifting under his beard and the skin of his cheek like he’s chewing his words, rolling them around in his mouth, unsure of their taste or how he feels about them on his tongue.

Fenris starts to pull back, frowning slightly and edging closer to concern as Hawke continues to mull over what it is he wants to say. He maneuvers until he can prop his chin on his arms, folded across the top of Hawke’s belly. Before Fenris can formulate a plan to combat Hawke, a man who has never been quiet in his _life_ , and his sudden loss of words, he starts speaking, the same strange solemnity from before in his voice.

“When did you know you loved me?”

“Oh.” Fenris ducks his head, a pleasant flush spreading to the tips of his ears. “That’s an easy one. And here I thought you were going to ask me something that would require some thought, like whether I am _absolutely_ certain I never slept with Isabela.”

“Fenris!” Hawke manages to sound every bit as scandalized as an Orlesian noble witnessing a Mabari puppy shitting on an Antivan-weave rug.

“In my defense,” Fenris lets his smile slip free. “I was very drunk for a very long time.”

“She would have eaten you alive,” Hawke bemoans. “And then where would we be?”

It’s not an entirely rhetorical question. So much of what happened in Kirkwall, so many of their choices were made with the other in mind. Even when they were not together, they moved towards the same future.

Fenris kisses Hawke’s pouting mouth. “I would always be yours.”

Hawke huffs in a put-on way, but he looks pleased. Nevertheless, they have been by each other’s sides for long enough now for Fenris to know that Hawke is still in pursuit of an answer to his earlier question and will, undoubtedly, press until he gets one. Fenris picks his battles, though he is quite capable of winning them all.

“Oh, alright.” Fenris sighs, unfolding one of his arms to rest his cheek against Hawke’s chest, and uses his newly freed hand to trace idle patterns and words along his rib bones. “It truly is an easy answer, though. It was that night, after Danarius…”

 

**Kirkwall, in the middle of it all**

_“the whole damn sky holds its breath”_

 

The bottle shattered between Fenris’ palm and the stone wall, exploding in a shower of glass and dark red wine. He lowered his hand slowly, alcohol and blood falling in a steady drip drip drip from his fingers, but he felt nothing beyond a creeping numbness.

He was an observer of his own body, a body that by all rights was, for the first time, truly his own. There was no one left to lay claim to it. Still, he only watched as it raged, screamed, and destroyed until all that was left of the finest wine Orlais had to offer were their broken remains, a pile of jagged-edged glass shattered in the fireplace, and wine stains splattered like blood flicked from the end of a sword after the battle is finished and all there’s left to do is collect the corpses and go home.

Except this is not a home. This is the shell of a nightmare, it’s insides scrapped out and burned, while the taste of it lingered in the smell of smoke trapped in the back of the throat. He lived in the mausoleum of the man who’d split open his skin, and crawled inside, who possessed him entirely, in every unsayable way, who branded him slave and demanded thanks for it. The man who tangled freedom tantalizing close, secure in his assumption that a broken toy is just a broken toy, and incapable of recognizing a choice when it is finally placed in front of him.

“Fenris? Are you alright? The door was open, and I saw the broken glass…” Hawke trailed off as he took in the wreckage and Fenris in the middle of it.

Hawke stepped carefully into the room, brow furrowed, making no attempt to hide his concern as his eyes searched Fenris’ body for injuries, narrowing on his bloody hand. As Hawke came closer, Fenris realized he didn’t have his staff. Knowing Hawke, and he did. That is, know Hawke. Known him in ways he’d never known anyone else, small intimate ways that had been as alien to him as freedom, but once experienced, were almost as impossible to live without.  Hawke had undoubtedly stowed the staff somewhere else in the mansion, as if Fenris could pretend for even a moment that the closest person in the world to him possessed the thing that had so thoroughly tainted him, body and soul.

“You’re bleeding.”

Fenris raised his hand in front of his face.

“Yes,” he said dully, but as he tried to turn away, his body again betrayed him. Hawke caught him before he fell, his arms like tree boughs, strong and whispering of safety and sleep.

“Let me help you.” Hawke’s voice in his ear. “Please, Fenris _. Please_ let me.”

Hawke had always been his siren song. Fenris allowed himself to be lead to the bedroom he’d claimed as his own, but it was as cold and dead as the rest of the mansion. He sat on the bed, staring down at his hands while Hawke coaxed a fire to life on the hearth. The cuts on his palms and fingers finally started to hurt, and he clenched his hand slightly to feel the sharp lines of pain and to watch the blood well up in sluggish red beads.

A thick blanket settled over his shoulders, and Fenris blinked slowly as Hawke knelt in front of him with a roll of soft, white bandages. He used one of the bandages to dab at the blood, bottom lip caught between his teeth as he concentrated. When the cloth caught on in one of the cuts and Fenris inhaled sharply, Hawke froze, then looked up at him sheepishly.

“Sorry. I’m not very good at bandages.”

Right. Because Hawke was a mage, and mages didn’t need bandages. Fenris swallowed past the dryness in his throat.

“You could…heal it, if that’s simpler.”

Hawke tied off the bandage with a flourish.

“In the morning, if you really want,” he said easily. “You’re practically dead on your feet right now.”

Fenris knew when he was being placated, but barely had the energy to summon an appropriately irritated glare. Exhaustion crashed over him like a wave, and sleep seemed determined to pull him under with it.

“Stay,” he said softly, half whisper, half dream.

 

The next time he woke, he was not himself.

Later, he’d remember it only as flashes, glimpses into the waking terrors that stalked his sleep. There would be other evidence, too: the rings of bruises around his wrists from when Hawke had been forced to hold him down as he tried to claw the lyrium out of his own skin; the state of his bottom lip, swollen and bruised from the pressure of his teeth biting down on it, trying to hold his screams inside his mouth; the mess he’d made of his room, the bed frame broken and the holes torn into the walls, as if he had simply yanked out fistfuls of stone.

Perhaps it was some strange fever, taken hold of his mind and _twisting_ until something snapped. Perhaps this was what true freedom was like, massive and incomprehensible. For so long, he had been skirting its edges as close as he dared, unable to take that final step, to walk into light and shadow, accepting both. He couldn’t, not while Danarius lived, and after all these years with not a sign of him, Fenris had come to accept that he would always live in that place between freedom and slavery.

But now, Danarius was dead and Fenris had killed him. A weapon turned on its creator. A monster turned on its maker. Danarius’ blood, warm and slick on his fingers, painting the grooves of his gauntlets a bright, sticky red.

Tainted. Ruined. Broken. The magic burned into skin and soul taunted and took until his sleep became nightmares became void.

He was not himself.

Then, sometime later, he woke up.

Fenris sat up slowly. His eyes felt heavy, his head strange and full, and his whole body ached. It took a moment for him to free his legs from the blankets, which had become impossibly tangled sometime during the night. The bedroom was still more or less dark with only a weak filtering of sunlight forcing its way through the one, shuttered window. Finally, his eyes fell on Hawke, still half in his armor and sound asleep against the bedroom door.

_“He will find me. He always finds me, and he’ll come in my bed and I won’t—”_

_“Fenris.”_

_Hawke. Warm, gentle hands on his face, brown eyes flecked gold and green gazing into his own, steady and steadying. Being with this man has been the safest, most dangerous thing he’s ever done in his life._

_Rational thought flees._

_“It’s not safe. It’s not safe. Please, he’s coming, the door—.”_

_“I’ll be right here. See? I’m right here. No one is coming through this door, I swear to you. Fenris, I will stand here all night if that’s what it takes. You are safe. He is dead, and we are here. You’re safe.”_

Hawke snored, his chin dipping forward, and Fenris staggered out of bed, muscles protesting, (what had he _done_ to himself last night?) and fell to his knees at Hawke’s side. He’d never been so aware of his heart before, beating so fast and still so light, a cluster of butterflies with feather-soft wings fluttering in his rib cage.

“Hawke.” It was barely a whisper, but Hawke’s eyes flew open and he sat up so fast his chin almost collided with Fenris’ forehead.

“I’m awake. Are you alright?” Hawke made to grab his hand, but stopped just short of touching him.

“May I?”

In lieu of an answer, Fenris kissed him. It lasted no more than a second or two, chaste and so very careful, Hawke frozen beneath him, Fenris determined and open in a way he’d never felt before. Fenris reluctantly broke the kiss, and rested his head lightly against Hawke’s shoulder, knees pressed against his thigh. Tentative fingers touched his hair and, when Fenris did nothing more than sigh softly, gently carded through the longer strands at the back of his neck.

“What was that for?” Hawke asked quietly.

Fenris looked up, and Hawke’s hand stilled.

“I—you— Hawke, you _spent the night on my floor_.”

Hawke blinked, confused.

“You were afraid someone was going to come in while you slept,” he said, as if anyone would have spent long hours on a cold stone floor, guarding against the ghosts in Fenris’ head just to help him sleep. 

Fenris sat back on his heels hard. He stared at Hawke in wonder.

“You are the strangest man I have ever known.” It’s not what he intended to say; that had been significantly more profound, but Hawke grinned up at him anyways.

“And the most handsome.” He winked and Fenris rolled his eyes, lips twitching.

He stood, and offered Hawke a hand, pulling him to his feet. Fenris took a step back, unwilling to let go of Hawke’s hand.

“Lay down with me,” he said softly, trying his hardest not to sound tentative.

Hawke stepped closer, tilted Fenris’ chin up, pressed his lips to his forehead and lingered for a moment, just breathing.

“I would love to.” His voice was low and happy, but then he chucked Fenris under the chin and darted around him to fall dramatically back onto the mattress. “My back is _killing_ me.”

 

**Back in Ferelden, after it all**

_“To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace”_

 

“Oh,” Hawke says after Fenris falls silent. “I’d forgotten about that.”

Fenris kisses the dip in his chin.

“You were always kind, even when I truly did not deserve it. But that…” He clears his throat before continuing. “No one had ever done anything like that for me. I’d fought monsters and demons and dragons at your side, but you—you stood beside me and fought the ones that only existed in my head.” A soft, strange smile touches his mouth. “How could I not love you?”

Hawke wraps his arm around the small of Fenris’ back, pulls him up until he’s close enough to kiss and holds him there. Hawke’s breath mingling with his own, small puffs across his mouth, they exist in this place together, this bed and this life. Their life.

“Why do you ask?” Fenris whispers, and it holds more than one question: it is why is this a question? on this day? why now and not before? or later? or ever?

Hawke toys with the scrap of red cloth around Fenris’ wrist.

“That other day when you took this,” he tugs on the cloth, “off to wash, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen you without it.  It was…a strange feeling.” Hawke falters, and his brow dips into a frown.

“You’ve worn it for so long, and we’ve been together for so long, and I suppose I just wondered when it was that you _knew_.” Hawke doesn’t have to say anything more, because Fenris _does_ know.

He settles down against Hawke’s side. “I understand,” he says, and because he’s curious now, he continues. “What about you? When did you know?”

Hawke’s laughter rumbles in his chest, and Fenris’ whole body shakes with it.

“Now _that_ really is an easy one,” he says, one hand wandering dangerously low on Fenris’ back. “You pulled a man’s heart from his chest in front of my eyes, and that was it. Unhygienic and angry really does it for me.”

Fenris actually does bite his nipple this time. Hawke yelps loudly and glares at him, but Fenris concentrates on kissing it better and for some time, they both put their minds to other things.

Later, they lay side by side, breathing hard and satisfied, and Fenris, eyes closed and a faint, smug smile on his face, says, “Is now a good time to tell you that the door you so valiantly blocked with your body opened _out_ , not _in_ to that room?”

Hawke stares sidelong at Fenris for a long moment.

“So, you’re saying that if there _had_ been an intruder, ghostly or otherwise, they could have just pulled it open and I would have been sprawled elegantly at their feet?”

“Yes, but it probably would not have been all that elegant,” Fenris agrees, lips twitching.

Hawke nods distractedly.

“I take it all back,” he says primly. “I hate you _so much_.”

Hawke rolls over on top of Fenris and swallows his laugh with a demanding kiss.

Fenris pulls away long enough to gasp air into his lungs, run his finger down the bony ridge of Hawke’s nose, and whisper, “ _Liar_.”

 

**_Fini._ **

**Author's Note:**

> 'tis not an ounce of plot to be found, but I had a very specific image stuck in my head so I wrote this. Cheers.
> 
> quotes, cited in the order in which I stole them:
> 
> 1\. Title, from Oscar Wilde: "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."  
> 2\. "our bodies, possessed by light" from Scheherazade by Richard Siken  
> 3\. "the whole damn sky holds its breath" from Offering by Stevie Edwards  
> 4\. "to forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace" from The Canterville Ghost, again by Oscar Wilde


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